


Near Mint Condition

by deutschtard



Series: Collectibles [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, slight romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 10:53:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deutschtard/pseuds/deutschtard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil slides back into the life of supervising the Avengers pretty easily. Steve missed his best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Near Mint Condition

Things settled back into a normal rhythm after the party. The Avengers save the world, and Phil has to deal with all the paperwork. But he loves it, it’s one of the best things about his job. Well, okay, maybe it isn’t always, after all, the sheer amount of reports that need to be filed after a mission are staggering.  He takes it in stride, and Steve’s there when he’s got downtime.

“So what’s next on the teaching agenda, Phil?” Steve asks with a smile, leaning on the side of Phil’s car in his leather jacket. He’s got a thin striped shirt on this time, and blue jeans—he’s progressing into the modern era rather well.

Phil switches his briefcase from one hand to the other and puts on a face as though he’s pondering, “Well, computers are gonna be an ongoing thing. How about we do something not too difficult?”

“Sounds like a plan, I can go with easy for once,”

“Digital cameras it is, then,” he disengages the alarm on his car with a beep, which startles Steve, “Car alarm, make sure no one steals it,”

Steve looks sheepish, “Right. I knew that. Digital cameras? What’s the difference between cameras I’m used to? Other than, you know, them being digital?” he asks as he slips into the passenger seat of the car.

Phil turns the car on and smiles his tight-lipped, genuine smile, “Well, for one thing there’s no film, not like you’d know it at least,” the look on Steve’s face is one he wishes he had a picture of, one he’d like to keep for a long time. Then he told himself to shut up, because one shouldn’t be finding their idol’s naivety endearing, not like that.

SHIELD’s given Coulson a monthly budget, but he never spends more than half of it, he’s got a lot saved up. As he pulls into the parking lot of a Best Buy, he turns to Steve, “This store, you’ve been in one before, haven’t you?”

Steve balks, “I uh, didn’t really do much world exploring after Loki,” he admits, “Stark showed me the basics of a computer, and I learned how to use a smart phone without too much help, but that’s about the extent of my technologic knowledge.”

 _Damn_ , that shouldn’t be adorable. “All right, then this store is gonna be pretty daunting. We’re going to go in for a digital camera and a storage device we can keep all the pictures on, but if you see anything else you’d rather talk about, you let me know,” Phil hopes that this trip doesn’t go badly, that Steve doesn’t spook too much.

Ever the soldier, Steve nods and puts on a serious face, “Right, I’ll just stick close to you, then. Let’s get the camera and skedaddle.”

Phil has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from laughing.

As they enter, Steve looks terrified. All the colors and lights and sounds bombard both of them as they walk in, and someone in a day-glo yellow shirt greets them. Phil returns it kindly, “Okay, cameras are over this way. You sure you’re okay, Steve?”

“I...yeah. I’m okay. This place is just so… _loud_ ,”

Phil nods, “I know what you mean.”

****

They manage to get out of the Best Buy unscathed with a 16.2 megapixel camera, an 8 gigabyte memory card, and a bonus: A CD of ‘Hits of the 30s and 40s’ that made Steve light up so much as he read the back, Coulson just told him to bring it to the register.

Now they have to find a good place to take some photos. Central Park is always good, and it was Steve’s suggestion, so that’s where they go. The light’s just tilting towards evening when they get there, and Phil makes a note that he’ll have to buy Fury a new eye patch or something for letting him leave early. Technically he _was_ still on assignment; his duty of being Captain America’s friend had never been closed on his records.

The park is teeming with life, mothers with their children, college students, high school students on skateboards, men and women with dogs, and birds just about everywhere. They’d charged the battery in the car, and Phil had plugged in everything, explaining that the memory card held all the photos that could later be transferred to the computer, and he certainly didn’t get a tug in his chest when Steve stared at him slack-jawed as though he’d invented the camera himself.

“So press the power button, it should say on/off,”

“Okay, it—whoa.  That’s an awful big screen,” he says, staring at the camera’s digital screen.

Phil smiles, “Yeah, who needs a little hole to look through?”

“I guess you’re right. Okay, now what?”

“Well, you just point it at something you want to take a picture of and push that button there,” he points out the button, then describes how the image is saved to the best of his ability, “You might have to ask Stark about that one,”

Steve grimaces, “No thanks. He makes technology all the time, but he’s got no idea how to explain it to the average Joe.  But I…think I got it. From your description, it’s like a file folder, a microscopic file, right?”

“Exactly,” he beams just as big as Steve when he sees the pride on the man’s face at having understood something.

“What about that tree?” he starts walking off towards it.

“Wait!” Phil calls, “You _could_ get up closer to it, but you don’t have to,”

Steve looks at him, “What do you mean?”

He does his best to ignore the fact that his heart is beating out a samba on his chest at the way Steve’s face casts down like he did something wrong, “Cameras nowadays have a zoom in function, here, just press that button there.”

Steve does what he’s told and his eyes go wide. He holds the camera up towards the tree and zooms in, “Holy smokes, it’s just like binoculars, but better!”

The look of admiration on Steve’s face does in fact make Coulson’s knees go a little weak and his brain short-circuits for a moment. Captain America, his number one idol, is looking at him like he just saved his life or something. And good God if he doesn’t want to swoon, “Yeah, Steve. Let’s see how artistic you are with photography,” he manages to angle his head, pointing out towards the tree and some other nice bits of scenery in the park.

Steve pulls him into a hug before Phil knows what to do, “Thanks, Phil,” he says. The hug is warm, softer than the ones he’s gotten before, and by God if he doesn’t feel Steve’s head resting on his shoulder a bit. “You’re the only one who doesn’t make me feel stupid,” and with that, he lets go and tromps off to take some pictures. Phil can only stand there in disbelief.

Had that just happened?  Sure, it was only a hug, Steve had hugged him before, but those were different, Steve was just affectionate, right?

They spend the next couple of hours taking photographs of people, dogs, and landscapes, anything Steve can find that looks interesting. He has to stop quite a few times and ask Phil if he’s sure there’ll be enough room on the file card (he’ll get memory card down eventually) for all of his pictures, and Phil graciously assures him that an 8 gigabyte card can fit over 3,000 images at the current settings.

They pause halfway through and Phil tries to teach him some of the intricacies like ISO setting and exposure, as well as the different modes of the camera. He spends fifteen minutes going through every setting imaginable on this one little outcropping of trees, and he marvels at how different each picture looks on his tiny screen, how it can look so different with just the push of a couple of buttons.

By the time the light gets to the point where shooting would be a bad idea, Phil’s stomach growls audibly.

“Maybe we should go grab a bite,”

“Yeah, sounds like a plan.” This is not a date, Phil _knows_ it’s not a date; it’s just two friends going out for some food because they’ve been out all day and they’re hungry. But he can’t quite convince his heart that it’s not a date.

They end up at a hole in the wall pizza joint that’s actually been around since the 1920s. Steve nearly grabs the steering wheel and drives them through the front door when he sees it. “Totonno’s is still _open_.” How could Phil take them anywhere else?

The staff has changed, the menu’s changed a bit, too, but just walking in the door, Steve nearly gets misty-eyed. This is like walking back in time for him, and Phil can’t believe how happy he looks.  He looks like he’s just walked into his home back in 1940, like nothing’s changed.

Phil has never had pizza taste like this before.  To be fair, Phil’s pizza experience extends only from Papa John’s to Domino’s, and that’s not really _pizza_ if you ask an Italian. They share a Margherita pizza, and Steve spends the whole time telling Phil about times he came here when he was a kid, including their grand opening when he was just barely six years old. Phil laps it up, utterly enraptured with the stories, and with Steve’s face.

They end up closing the place down, and Phil’s had just a bit too much to drink to feel safe driving the car, so he has a SHIELD agent pick it up and take it to his house. They ride the subway instead.

Even at such an hour, the subway’s packed, and they barely manage to find a seat next to each other. By the time they hit Times Square, Phil may as well be sitting in Steve’s lap. “Sorry about this,” he says, gesturing to their situation.

“No problem, Phil, this is…this is fine,” and goddammit he’s blushing again, how is Phil supposed to understand these mixed signals? Is Steve just blushing because that’s what he does? Or is he blushing because he’s actually secretly feeling the same way about him?

No, Phil, stop. Stop thinking like that. Even if he _was_ thinking like that, too, Steve Rogers would never act on it because he is from the 40s and that would just be too weird for him, wouldn’t it?

They both get off at Steve’s apartment, and Phil insists on walking him up because even though they’re friends first, Phil’s also the agent in charge of keeping an eye on him and he’s protective.

“You really don’t have to d—“

“Shhh, yes I do. ‘Smy job,” Phil slurs a little. Somehow they make it up the four flights of stairs to Steve’s apartment and okay, maybe Steve carried him the last flight because his feet felt like they were covered in cement blocks and getting up the stairs was _hard_.

“Why don’t you sleep on the couch tonight, Phil, I don’t think I wanna send you home like this,”

“N-No, I couldn’t do that,” he sounds almost aghast, “I dunwanna impose, I’d—“

Suddenly a very large finger is covering Phil’s lips, “You won’t be imposing.”

Phil talks around the finger, “Promish?”

Steve smiles and ruffles Phil’s hair a bit, “Promise. Come on, let’s get you sat down. We can watch I Love Lucy until I go to bed.”

That, right now, sounds _fantastic_. He used to love I Love Lucy when he was a kid. Of course it was the kind of thing Captain America would like, because he knew everything about Captain America.

Steve gets a very quick drunken lesson on how to work the DVD player again, and then the familiar tune is playing on the television. Phil plops down next to him and he really shouldn’t be this drunk, he didn’t have _that_ much, did he? Well…they were there for almost four hours. Maybe he had drunk more than he thought.

A few episodes in, and Phil’s leaning on Steve’s arm because it’s so _warm_ and _soft_ and that is perfect to him right now it’s ridiculous. He didn’t know a human being could be that comfortable.

His eyes maybe close but before he knows it, he’s being shaken awake, “Hey, you’re konking out, so I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Oh,” he says, “Okay.”

Steve smiles and this time Phil can’t stop his hand reaching up to stroke a thumb across his cheek, which makes Steve blush and stutter.

“I-I um, Phil, I—Goodnight,” he says before scurrying into his room.

Phil faceplants into the couch, “ _Dammit_.”

****

When the sun rises and Phil not only does not have a hangover, but can smell pancakes from the kitchen, he realizes that God must be taking pity on him for being such an enormous idiot last night. He screws his eyes back shut and sits up, stretching.

“Morning,” Steve calls, “I thought you might be hungry so I’m making pancakes.”

He is so perfect it’s physically painful to think that he exists right now.  “Thanks,” and he figures he might as well get it over with now, “Listen, about last ni—“

“Phil,” oh crap, he’s using the Captain America voice.

Phil’s heart jumps into his throat as he stands; about to walk into the kitchen, but Steve’s already there in front of him. “I just wanted—“

“ _Phil_ ,” Steve says, and this time it’s Steve, not Captain America, talking to him. He chances opening his eyes. Steve’s smiling at him. “It’s okay,”

“No, it’s not okay, Steve, I overstepped a line, and I’m sorry.” Suddenly there’s a warmth encircling his hand, and he realizes that’s Steve’s hand, and he’s holding on tight.

Steve hesitates, “I…it’s really okay. I mean, I saw how you were looking at me in the restaurant,” his cheeks are goddamn _vermillion_ this is not fair at all, “I know that look, but I’ve never gotten it from a fella before.”

Oh god, his entire world is going to fall down around his ears. Captain America knows he’s got a crush on him. This is probably the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to him, “Steve, It’s not, I mean, I don’t—“

But Steve silences him again, big finger on his lips, “I don’t uh, I know it’s not illegal anymore. I told you that when you came back, right?”

“Well, yeah, but,”

“Why do you think I told you that?”

What. No, really, What was happening. Phil was incredibly confused right now, “I…guess you thought it might be important for me to know?” but he’d already known that, so why would Steve tell hi— _oh_. He gets it. A look of realization dawns on his face which makes Steve’s red begin to turn purple.

“I uh.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so, I mean, I’m pretty sure.”

Jesus Christ how was this happening to him, “Me?”

The look on Steve’s face nearly made Phil’s heart break, “Of course, you. You’re the only person who’s really been nice to me this whole time. Everyone else is either nice to me because I’m Captain America, or because they don’t want to scare the old codger with something,” he sighs, looks down at the ground, his hand still around Phil’s, “But you treat me like a regular human being. And I dunno, but I used to feel like my heart was running a marathon when I saw a pretty woman. And then it started doing that every time we decided to hang out.”

“I…Are you…you’re not kidding right now, are you,” Steve gives him a wounded look and he quickly compensates, “I’m sorry I just, you’ve been my idol since I was a little kid, and now you’re standing here telling me you _like_ me. Cap,” back to the old nickname again, unsure where all of this was going, “I have had dreams about days like this. But I always thought they would be nothing more than stupid fantasies.”

Steve smiles again and Phil’s completely disarmed, left bare in front of him because that smile just _does things_ to him. “Well I guess it’s not a fantasy anymore, is it?”

Captain America’s lips are _really_ soft.

 


End file.
